Finding Home
by Jinxgirl
Summary: Ficlets based off the movie Home Room, starring Erika Christensen and Busy Phillips. Smart, emotionally flat teenager Alicia is made to visit the naive, intellectual Deanna after the two classmates survive a school shooting together, and an unlikely friendship slowly forms. Not necessary to have watched movie to understand, but I do recommend the movie.
1. Chapter 1: Lively

Sometimes when Alicia watched Deanna interacting with the nurses, other patients, and staff in the hospital, she had to shake her head, amazed at the girl's repeated interpersonal exchanges. Although Deanna rarely volunteered information about herself to them, it seemed that she knew them all by name and knew information about their illnesses, in the case of the patients, and their family members, in the case of the nurses and staff. They all knew her by name as well, of course; she was the star patient, the one who everyone went out of their way to be kind to, in deference to the obvious bandaging of her head and the source of its injury. Every time Alicia saw Deanna around anyone, even people that, as it turned out, she didn't actually know, she was always smiling, always greeting them cheerfully, and never indicating to them that she herself felt anything less than perfectly well and sunny on that particular day.

"Do you ALWAYS have to be so damn personable?" Alicia asked her after standing impatiently through a ten minute conversation Deanna had allowed another patient to drag her into- only after which Alicia learned that Deanna had never seen the woman, whom she had assumed her to know previously, ever before in her life. "Do you ever just keep your head down and keep on moving and just get to wherever the hell you're going without stopping to listen to the life story of everyone who shuffles and drags their oxygen tanks over your path?"

Of course, Deanna had turned to look at her with that wide-eyed, earnest look Alicia was becoming so accustomed to, the look that never failed to make her roll her eyes and scoff inwardly, if not aloud, every time it was turned in her direction. "I don't have anywhere that important to be, Alicia. And it would be very rude to keep walking when someone wants to talk to me. People get lonely, you know? I wouldn't want to be mean to someone who needs someone to listen."

"I don't know how the hell you have time to be lonely, the way you bounce around chatting up anyone who has ears," Alicia had grumbled as she followed, slouching, after the younger girl.

But even as she said this, she knew that it wasn't the truth. She had seen the way Deanna's hospital room filled up with flowers and stuffed animals, notes and cards from those who wished her well, most of the ones she had read declaring that they were praying for her, that she was in their thoughts. And yet Alicia had spent enough time at the hospital with Deanna now to know that not a single one of those people had so much as picked up the phone to call her, let alone actually summoned up the caring, or perhaps the nerve, to come visit her in person.

She watched Deanna move and interact with others in a lively, lighthearted fashion, always smiling, always speaking in a cheerful inflection, telling everyone she encountered that she was doing well. Alicia, by contrast, slouched and clomped along behind her, giving everyone who looked at her the same irritable scowl or blank stare, and her hands rarely left their crossed position over her chest, certainly not extending out to touch or shake someone's hand. She wasted little energy and expended no effort, and she rolled her eyes that Deanna did.

And yet it was, perhaps, only Alicia who could see that Deanna's smile didn't meet her eyes, that sometimes when she turned away from the person she had just spoken with so warmly, a small shiver passed over her, and for just a moment before her smile had resumed, Alicia could see the screaming in her eyes. She could see the thoughts racing in her head through the surface of her gaze, and she knew that Deanna, unlike her, had not yet learned to numb.


	2. Chapter 2: Remorseful

Remorseful

Alicia hates to be around her father for longer than the time it takes to walk past him to her bedroom to shut the door.

It's not that she dislikes her father, or that they don't get along. It would make it so much easier if that were the case, so much simpler, if she could find a way to cast on him even a small portion of the blame. But Alicia's father loved her with all of his heart, would have given anything in the world, anything of himself, if he could insure that it would make her happy. And that was where the problem lay.

Every time her father looked at her or tried to address her, Alicia could all too clearly see the love and concern he felt for her in his gaze, could hear it in his voice. Every time he tried to reach out to touch her arm, every time he asked her to sit and talk with him, to tell him about her life, to share with him her thoughts, Alicia wanted nothing more than to yank out of his range of reach, to take off running and never stop until she could be sure she would no longer hear the tenderness he had directed towards her. Every time her father told her that he loved her, that he wanted or wished he could help her, every time he almost pleaded with her to tell him how he could do so, Alicia's guilt and self-disgust only increased- and the only way she could vent it was to direct it, however inappropriately, towards him.

It wasn't just his love, or his desire to help her, to "fix" her, that got to Alicia, although all of this was hard to swallow. It was his remorse. Every time he looked at Alicia, and sometimes, when he went so far as to tell her aloud, she knew that he was thinking he had failed her, that if only he had been different, or better as a father, if only he could have done more, then every terrible thing in her life, whether or not perpetrated by herself, never would have happened at all.

It wasn't his fault that she had taken advantage of his wheelchair bound status and his inability to physically check up on her when she chose to start sleeping with her boyfriend, junior year. It wasn't his fault she had discarded all his pained discussions of sex and birth control and ended up pregnant. And despite his conviction that he could have pushed harder for her not to be absent from school for most of that year, and that if he had made her attend while pregnant, she would not have fallen a year behind, Alicia knew for herself that as she had been almost seventeen, she was at an age where her father could not have forced her by law to attend, and he certainly couldn't have forced her physically.

It wasn't his fault that Amanda had been born too early, too sickly, and that Alicia had slept too hard in the night to know the exact moment that her baby had stopped breathing. It wasn't his fault that it had snowed too long and hard for them to do anything for days afterward, that Alicia had had to watch her baby stiffen and cold and begin to show the first signs of decomposing, before she could properly arrange for her to be taken care of, as she herself had not been able to. It wasn't his fault that she sometimes had to help him with things he could not manage on his own, that he could not help her in the same way, that he had been physically limited since before Alicia was old enough to even remember ever having had a life otherwise.

She knew that he felt he had failed her. What else could he think, when his daughter had gotten pregnant, lost her child before the baby was even three weeks old, and then attempted suicide, almost succeeded before he could find her and make the calls and temporary bandaging that had saved her life? How could he not worry, how could he ever look at her again, now that she was being questioned by the police, now that everyone in the town looked at her dark clothes and makeup, her ever present glare, her friendship with the boy who had torn their town apart, and think anything except that he had failed her?

But Alicia knew this was not the case. And this is why she avoids her father's eyes, his gentle touch or his efforts to give to her something she cannot accept. It is not her father who has failed; it is she who has failed him.


	3. Chapter 3: dismiss

Dismiss

It should have been easy for Alicia to dismiss Deanna. It should have been easy for her to leave at five pm on the dot, that first day, and never look back, never even think about her again. It should have been easy not to care about what Deanna would do with herself all day, lying alone in her hospital room, to tell herself that she was no one's savior and certainly no one's friend. It should have been easy to push her out of her thoughts and certainly to avoid making her even a tiny part of her life.

And in some ways, it was. Initially Alicia had looked at Deanna as pathetic, as a friendless rich girl nothing like herself, a daddy's girl trust fund baby who would never really be able to understand what it was to struggle, who would never understand a fraction of the pain that Alicia herself had experienced, before she stopped herself from feeling anything at all. She had let herself be irritated by Deanna's gratingly cheerful demeanor, her aggressively naïve outlook, and she had thought she would be relieved to get through one forced day in her company and then never look back again.

But even at the end of that day, Alicia had known, even before she could acknowledge it to herself, even before Deanna's whispered admission of her genuine suffering, that she could not do this. She had looked at the pills she took as routine, simply to keep herself able to breathe, to somewhat function in the world, and she had known all too well what agony she must feel without their blunting effect. She had looked into Deanna's screaming eyes coupled with her uncertain smile, and she had seen the pathetic eagerness with which she seemed to accept even her own sorry company, no matter how nasty Alicia was towards her, and without wanting to at all, she had felt something previously tightly drawn loosen around her chest. She wouldn't quite say she felt for Deanna, not yet. But she understood, and it was enough to make her stay.


	4. Chapter 4: Forward

Forward

It's time to move on, everyone always said, face the present, face the future, and live your life. Find joy in each small moment and be thankful for every new breath given; always marvel at the fact that you are alive.

But Deanna could not help but live her life in the past, always looking over her shoulder, struggling to understand from what she had come and what still forgotten memories of her trauma now affected her today. And Alicia so blatantly refused to look back, to take onto her present the suffering of what had brought her to today, that she remained rooted, unmoving, only in the moment at hand, unwilling to let herself act with the knowledge she had obtained from before. Both of them had learned, in their own ways, that there was nothing so dangerous as moving forward; better to scuttle backwards or stay still than to walk bravely onward towards the unknown.


	5. Chapter 5: Heaven

Heaven

Deanna had learned, in the past several days, that the place to find Alicia, in the mornings, if she had arrived before Deanna was presentable for visitors, was in the hospital chapel. She could always be counted on to be sitting up at the front row, head bowed slightly forward, eyes hooded, and when Deanna would enter quietly, not wanting to startle her, she would lift her head so slowly to regard her that Deanna would wonder if she had known she was approaching before she ever entered at all.

With anyone else, Deanna would suspect that the length of time she spent in the chapel was an indication that she was praying, or seeking out peace or comfort, in the light of what they had both been through. It would seem the obvious reason. But with Alicia, she could almost believe that the girl was simply taking a few minutes in a quiet place to let herself doze off before reporting to her "duty" with Deanna.

Deanna still couldn't quite understand why Alicia still came to see her, day after day, hour after hour. No one was making her do it, not after that first day; no one even knew that she came, even Deanna's own parents. She was getting no credit of any kind, and she was not benefitting herself so far as Deanna could tell. Alicia's version was that she had nothing better to do with her time, and maybe that was true. But Deanna liked to think, and sometimes, she could almost believe, that the older girl had some deeply hidden vestiges of compassion and kindness that drove her…that maybe, she even sort of liked her.

Sometimes it was hard to keep thinking that when Alicia would make another biting comment or do something as completely rude as was typical of her. But still, Deanna liked to think that this were true.

"Why are you always in the chapel in the mornings?" she dared to ask her, on the third day in a row that Alicia could be found her, bleached white hair partly in her eyes, one piece sticking out the corner of her mouth. As the girl got to her feet, stretching in a fashion so lazy it looked as though she were more sleepy after doing so than before, and shrugged her backpack onto her shoulder, Deanna waited for her to catch up to her at the doorway, expecting and not being disappointed by her usual eye roll in reply. She had almost given up on Alicia answering at all before the girl replied.

"Already explained this to you, for a girl genius, you're slow on the uptake, aren't you? It's quiet here. In the morning, I need as much quiet as I can cram into my skull to power through the day with you, Miss Jabberjaw."

Deanna just smiled. She wasn't offended by the statement; it was direct, as Alicia generally was, and for Alicia, fairly mild as well.

"But the library is quiet, and even sitting outside in the sun by the walking path. But I guess maybe too many books so close to you or too much sunlight in one day would weaken you or something…kind of like garlic and silver with vampires?" When Alicia just stared at her, her lip curled into a partial glare, Deanna smiled uneasily. "Get it…because you're always in black?"

"Jesus, spare me from your efforts at humor," Alicia heaved a sigh, and there was definitely an eye roll accompanying her words then. She slunk down the hallway with Deanna towards her room, making no further comments, but even those words had Deanna thinking. She snuck several glances at Alicia, trying to figure out the best way to word her question, before coming out with it hesitantly.

"So…do you believe in him? You know, Jesus?"

"Why does it matter to you?" was Alicia's acerbic response. "Let me guess, you're all homegirl for Jesus, and you want me to join your happy gang."

Deanna tried not to flinch at this, but nevertheless knew she had at least blinked, uncomfortable by the scathing tone of Alicia's voice. She knew if she let the girl see that she was even faintly scandalized by her wording, Alicia would take the ball and run with it much further than Deanna wanted it to go, so she cleared her throat, trying to use careful but truthful wording.

"Well…yes, I'm a Christian. But I don't judge you if, you know, you're not. I respect your beliefs and everything. It's just…you're always in the chapel, and I thought maybe-"

"That I'd convert to your enlightened ways?" Alicia's sarcasm was almost tangible. As they entered Deanna's room, she flopped herself onto her customary chair, her legs akimbo carelessly, and eyed her with disdain. "If you haven't noticed, I'm neither a team player nor one to worship. And if I talk to an invisible being in the sky, it's gonna be because I lost complete touch with sanity rather than because I'm experiencing religious ecstasy." She cut her eyes at her, her darkly lipsticked lips curving into a smirk. "What with your head wound and all, maybe you should make sure that's not the case with you."

Deanna flushed, briefly biting her lip and looking away from Alicia as she settled herself onto her bed, cross-legged. She didn't acknowledge or try to defend herself from the girl's jab about her questionable sanity, though she couldn't deny to herself that her feelings were somewhat hurt. Instead, she said carefully after a few moments, "I just was curious, that's all."

"You were prying," Alicia corrected her, her hands now idly prodding at her cuticles. "And probably praying that your stellar influence has rubbed off on assured, I'm invulnerable. But for my part, I'll probably have you cursing so much your tongue goes blue and probably sleeping with half the aids here. Male AND female."

She smirked slyly as Deanna's face reddened further. It took her a few false starts before Deanna could manage to continue the conversation.

"Well…I guess what I don't get is…do you believe in anything? Like…are you an-"

"You can say the word atheist out loud without Satan coming to steal your soul away, you know," Alicia told her dryly. "Most likely your tongue won't wither up and die from it. And yeah, that's what I am, if you absolutely have to put a label on it. Beats the alternative."

She stretched again, propping one booted foot up on the edge of Deanna's bed. Normally this would bother Deanna, as she considered it unsanitary, but she let it go for now, intent on finding out Alicia's thoughts on the matter as much as the other girl was willing to explain.

"But…you don't believe in anything happening after you die?" she persisted. "I don't know how you could stand that, thinking that everything just…ends. For me, that's what gives me hope, it's what makes me feel like there's a reason I'm alive and everyone else here too. Knowing that even after everything, everything is going to be okay, and having God to turn to when things are hard…how can you stand not to have that? I'm not trying to offend you, I promise, I just…how do you do that?"

The laugh that Alicia gave her in response was absolutely lacking any humor.

"How can YOU stand it?" she leveled back at her, the question seemingly genuine. "If you go by what you supposedly believe, by what supposedly gives you so much comfort and peace of mind, then what you believe is that God loves everyone soooo much, and yet he stood back twiddling his thumbs while everyone's brains were blown all around the room. God loved you so much, yet he let you get a bullet in the brain. God loves you so much, and yet he won't take you away from the nightmares you wake up screaming from every fucking night. God loves you, God is your comfort, and yet every time you're so shit scared you can't breathe, it's not God you turn to, it's a fucking bottle of pills."

She laughed again, but there was anger coloring her tone now, tightening the features of her face. Her hands had become fists against her thighs, and when she spoke again, she was looking past Deanna towards her window, glaring at something Deanna could not quite see.

"I don't believe in God because if I did, I would have to believe he's a fucking asshole who hates us all. I can't believe in a god who kills his children."

And there was nothing Deanna could think of to say in response to that, not even a weak protest that God had killed no one, he had simply allowed them to die. Because how could use ready platitudes to defend what even she knew to be true- that God had, at the very least, done nothing to stop their deaths?


	6. Chapter 6: Prowl

Prowl

Although Alicia came to visit her every day, and for the most part, did stay with her throughout its duration, she would sometimes get so irritated with Deanna, or become so bored or restless, that she would stand abruptly, announcing that she "had to get out of here before my head gets as soft as my ass."

Deanna was never sure where it was that she went, whether it was close or far, within the hospital walls or somewhere outside them, whether she drove a car or went by foot, or whether this changed by day and current whim. She had asked Alicia, the first time this happened, when the girl returned approximately two hours later and behaved as if she had never left at all. But it was clear to her after Alicia's scathing response and her general lack of willingness to disclose more information to Deanna than she deemed necessary that the girl wished to keep this private, though it was unclear to Deanna whether this was because it was truly something she didn't want to share, or because she enjoyed making Deanna burn with curiosity. Either possibility seemed equally possible when it came to Alicia.

It came out later, however, through a seemingly aimless conversation days after Alicia had "gone on walkabout" several times, that Alicia did the same thing in her own home. For over a year now, if she felt like getting out of the house, she would do exactly that, without a word of asking permission or even giving warning towards her father. Deanna didn't know why she found this surprising. After all, Alicia was nineteen, a legal adult, and could in fact live anywhere and with whomever she wanted without having to give her father any word about it at all. And it wasn't like Alicia had so far presented herself as anything even approximately resembling that of a solicitious and obedient anything, let alone daughter.

Still, Deanna's only point of reference was her own family, and the storm it would provoke if she behaved in this manner, and so she found Alicia's ability to do this without a second thought fascinating.

"You mean you just walk out?" she asked, blinking somewhat incredulously as she leaned unconsciously towards Alicia. "Just, I'm done, so I'm gone? You just go?"

"What did you think I should do, put up a banner in the sky announcing it?"

"Well…doesn't your dad worry?" Deanna frowned, absently beginning to twist a strand of her hair around her fingers. She looked at Alicia carefully, noting that the other girl was, as usual, slouched in the chair across from her bed, scraping her nails beneath her fingernails, as if she were cleaning them. "I mean, my parents would really freak out. They would start talking about how I wasn't being respectful and responsible, and how they couldn't know that I was okay if I did something that impulsive."

"Your parents probably flip if you go to the bathroom without informing them and keeping track of how many times you pissed versus shit," Alicia rolled her eyes, her tone caustic as usual as she held her nails up to her face, inspecting them. She let her hands drop back down to her thighs as she looked up at Deanna, meeting her eyes for the first time in several minutes.

"My dad worries if I'm sitting right beside him holding his hand, although that obviously will never happen. So I might as well do what I want and give him something somewhat real to worry about."

Deanna couldn't imagine having that sort of attitude towards her parents. Not worrying her parents, not disappointing them or making them think that she would do something wrong or foolish or embarrassing…that was one of the main focuses of her life, a lead factor in every decision she made. Sometimes it did get wearying, to always try so hard to be the perfect daughter, the perfect girl, and sometimes she did find herself secretly wishing that she could rebel, that she could mess up on purpose and have the guts to look her parents in the eyes and say so. But didn't. She didn't, and she couldn't, and the few times she had even started to try, she had backed down almost as soon as she had begun.

"Where do you go? You know, when you walk out on your dad like that," Deanna asked nervously, but with some hope for getting an actual response. This was the most open Alicia had been with her in a while, and although this answer, if she got one, would not necessarily be the same as where Alicia went while visiting with her, it might give her some insight to make a guess.

Alicia shrugged,stretching out her arms over her head in a lazy manner, so her shirt rode up and briefly showed an expanse of pale abdomen before she lowered her arms again. "Wherever. I walk. Neighborhoods, streets, wherever my feet end up. I don't have a map and five point tourist destination every time I head out the door. Sometimes it's the going that matters, not the where." She shrugged again, adding casually, "Sometimes I don't go anywhere except up on the roof. That's what really drives me crazy, he can't find me and he knows he has no way to get me down if he did."

Deanna gasped in spite of herself, her eyes going round at this thought. She couldn't imagine doing something like this, and the idea of Alicia doing it is frightening to her as well. She isn't sure how this happened, or what Alicia would think if she knew, but in the last few days, she's started to develop a sense of concern and caring for the other girl, no matter how rude and prickly she is towards her. The thought of Alicia falling off her own roof and being badly injured, with her disabled father unable to help her, was a terrible thought for her. And walking alone with no destination in mind, after everything? How could she possibly even think of doing such a thing, let alone regularly carry it out?

"You just go walking around alone?" she asked, wide-eyed. "All by yourself?"

"Isn't that what alone usually means? For a supposed genius, you're a little slow sometimes," Alicia rejoined, flexing her fingers. She exhaled, muttering something about needing a cigarette to deal with the stupidity of this conversation, before continuing in a more normal volume, "Some people, the ones who's rich daddies don't buy them cars the second they're old enough to drive complete with sappy license plate, actually aren't so lazy they don't know how to haul their ass somewhere without a vehicle wrapped around it."

Deanna flinched at this comment. Alicia had remarked on this truth about the source of Deanna's car-as well as the "Thx Dad" license plate her father had equipped it with- at least once a day, since the last time transportation had come up in a conversation. It seemed a sore spot to her, an embodiment of the kind of person she thought Deanna was, and the kind of lifestyle she understood or believed her to have.

"I didn't mean to imply that you couldn't walk, like you were lazy," she fumbled, trying to backpedal the conversation. Alicia was so easily offended sometimes, so completely thick-skinned at others, that she often felt like she was fumbling for the right words to talk to her, all the while knowing that any she chose would be wrong. "I just wondered…don't you worry what will happen, or what could happen, walking around alone like that all the time? I mean…don't you feel unsafe?"

Alicia had gone back to playing with her fingers as Deanna had spoken, but at these words, she looked up slowly, deliberately meeting the other girl's eyes. She held her gaze for such a long moment that Deanna grew uncomfortable, tempted to look down or away, before she finally responded.

"You got shot in the head sitting at school in the middle of twenty people. There's danger everywhere, Deanna. You might as well look it in the face and call it a bitch when you see it."

It wasn't a philosophy that Deanna could ever personally live by, and it certainly wasn't one she could carry out. But she could understand it in Alicia, even respect it, and the small smile she gave her in turn, however uncertain and worried, was still genuine.


	7. Chapter 7: Cut

Deanna had suspected, even before asking Alicia, that there might be a reason that the other girl didn't want her to try on her glove, a reason that she never took it off, no matter how hot it was outside or how awkward it looked for her to be able to use the fingers of that hand. She never could have asked outright- it would be very rude, much more Alicia's style than hers. But even had she not been hesitant to be rude, she wouldn't have had the nerve. Alicia could be scary, with her biting words and her hostile, almost aggressive posture, and Deanna would not have been surprised at all, had the other girl decided to physically challenge her, if she pushed her too far.

But she did suspect. It was something Deanna heard about vaguely from other people, that girls like Alicia, who wore all black and had such attitudes, who seemed to think of the world as an infuriating or grim place, often did things to hurt themselves, then covered them up in such a way that no one knew. Deanna generally had avoided the other kids who looked or acted like Alicia, not because she wanted to be mean to them, but because they sort of scared her. What kind of things did they do or think, to dress and act like they did? What if they hated Deanna and wanted to hurt her, for being so different from them? Or worse, what if simply being around them, for longer than it took for a quick smile or greeting, would somehow rub off on her, take out all the dark thoughts Deanna always tried to deny existed at all, and magnify them until she too was nothing but bleak and pessimistic, until she could no longer even try to shake herself out of her own inner darkness?

Was that what had happened to Alicia, to the other kids like her? Surely they hadn't dressed like that, behaved like that, thought like that when they were little kids. No child in elementary school dressed all in black and did things to hurt themselves, or at least not that Deanna could remember. Not that she hoped. So at what point had this happened to Alicia…and how?

She had stared at the glove, when she was sure Alicia wasn't looking, thinking of the term she had heard- "cutting," was what most of the other kids called it, but Deanna had once read an article in Seventeen magazine about it, and it had called it self-harm. Deanna had read the article with a mixture of fascination and horror, vaguely squeamish as she thought about its descriptions of girls with razor scars on their wrists and inner thighs, cigarette burns on their lower stomach, even bite marks on their upper arms. What could make a person want to cause themselves physical pain, when Deanna herself didn't even like to get her finger pricked at the doctor's office? What could make a person want to make their body become marred, even ugly?

She had not understood, had thought that she simply never would. But that night, when Alicia was sleeping, and she had untied and peeled back the elbow length glove from her skin with such care, staring at the scar that snaked up the length of the other girl's inner arm, she had felt no disgust or curiosity, no horror or shock, as she might have months ago. She felt only a heavy sadness, the first grains of understanding towards Alicia, even as more questions came to mind.

She had been very careful to put Alicia's glove right again, not wanting her to know of the violation of her privacy, of the peek, without permission given, she had taken, looking into the other girl's secret, her psyche, maybe even her soul. But even when Alicia came groggily awake and left the room, and Deanna remained motionless in bed, eyes closed, she could not seem to bring herself any weariness or inclination towards sleep.

What could have made someone like Alicia, who seemed so strong to her, so emotionless, so entirely unable to shake up, be brought so low that she would do something so serious to try to harm herself, to try to take her own life? Alicia had, so far from what Deanna had seen, barely reacted at all to what was to Deanna the scariest, most horrifying event of her lifetime- and she had been awake and aware through the whole thing, unlike Deanna herself. What could have been so much more terrible that even Alicia couldn't take it and want to go on alive?

She wanted to ask her where it had happened, and when, whether she had planned it for days or decided in one impulsive moment. She wanted to ask her if she had written a note, if she had thought at all about what her family would think or feel. She wanted to ask her if she had smoked or drank first, to give herself strength to go through with it, if her conviction had wavered at all, before taking that first cut. She wanted to ask who had found her, and how they had reacted, if Alicia remembered going to the emergency room, her life being saved. She wanted to ask her if it had hurt, and how much, and if she had wanted for even a second to take it back.

She wanted to ask her if she was sorry she had tried, or sorry that she hadn't succeeded. She wanted to ask her if she ever thought about trying again, and if she would choose to do it in the same way as before.

But what disturbed Deanna the most about the questions and curiosities that would not leave her mind that night was how her thoughts kept creeping back to the pale, veiny expanse of her own inner arm, the skin smooth and unharmed, save for the occasional marks of IVs at the crooks of her elbows. And no matter how she tried to turn her mind back to Alicia, or away from these thoughts at all, the same idea kept turning over and over in her mind, not quite dropping entirely.

She wondered what it would be like, if she were to try the same thing herself. She wondered if she would be happy, if she were to finish off what Alicia had not.


	8. Chapter 8: Impulse

Impulse

Deanna's room was nowhere near the nursery wing of the hospital, or the delivery rooms either, and Alicia could only be grateful for this. She knew she could not have stood to come, day after day, hour after hour, and watch the wailing, cursing, panting mothers to be wheeled into their rooms, to hear the cries of the women in labor and the cursing of men, God, and anyone near them in their time of pain. It would have brought back uncomfortable memories of her own experience, of a time where she had been miserable, with only her awkward father at her side- and also a time of joy that she knew without a doubt she would never feel again.

She couldn't have handled the mothers, but the babies would have been the final straw. Watching a parade of newborns carried into the nursery to be cleaned and bathed, swaddled up and set in their hospital cribs, seeing their reddened faces and messy hair, their squinty eyes and oddly shaped noses….seeing them wave their tiny fists and make their mewling cries would have hit her straight in the chest, leaving her with visualizations of Amanda so vivid she could not have breathed, so strong she would have felt herself to be living in the past all over again.

Sometimes even outside of the hospital, when she saw a new mother walk past her with a newborn in her arms, Alicia felt a strong urge to reach out to her, to beg her to let her hold the baby close to her heart, to bury her nose in its sweet-smelling hair and never let it go. Sometimes she felt her heart begin to pound so hard and fast she could almost convince herself it was Amanda inside her again, kicking her until she could barely breathe. And sometimes she felt a flare of pain, surpassing the numbness she usually experienced, so intense that it was all she could do to turn away, to start walking as far as fast as she could, trying and never succeeding in leaving her own anguish behind.


	9. Chapter 9: Compromise

Compromise

"Why is it that you always have to have your way?" Deanna asked, genuine curiosity as well as frustration in her tone. She cocked her head at the other girl as Alicia, yet again, remanded custody of the remote control, flipping the channel off the documentary that Deanna had paused over and beginning to click her way through the limited offerings of the hospital cable at a rate so fast it was making Deanna's eyes feel funny. How could the girl even know what she was looking at before switching when she was doing it so quickly?

It wasn't that she minded Alicia having the choice or a preference of what to watch. It was more so that she was so entitled and rude about it, making a demand rather than a request, that had begun to rub at Deanna's nerves. She watched her slouching, as she nearly always did in Deanna's hospital room, in her customary visitor's chair, eyes glued to the TV with utter disdain and boredom as she continued to flip through, not even bothering to glance towards Deanna as she replied.

"Because if I get my way then I get what I want. How is that a complicated thing to understand?"

"Yeah, but there's a way to go about that," Deanna tried to tell her, partial irritation, partial amusement coloring her tone. She tried to rid her voice of the irritation, knowing that it would only amuse Alicia further if she detected it and probably just drive her to further efforts to antagonize her. Deanna got the feeling sometimes that Alicia's goal was to eventually get her really lose her temper towards her, not for Deanna's own good or out of any sort of concern that she needed to express her feelings or anything like that, but rather because she would enjoy watching her finally rage.

"And that would be what, exactly?" Alicia drawled, eyebrows raised. She deliberately clicked through the TV channels some more, seemingly even faster to Deanna, no longer even looking at the TV. She was now eyeing Deanna, gauging her reaction, as the other girl breathed in slowly through her nose, trying to answer calmly, so as not to satisfy her.

"You know. Be polite. Ask people their opinion or permission…compromise. Don't make everything about you, sometimes you can both win a little bit without completely losing or making someone upset."

"Compromise IS a loss," Alicia snorted, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "You're giving up something you wanted and pretending that you're okay with that, and no one is getting what they really want. What the hell else would you call that?"

"And anyway," she said with a slow smirk as she returned her attention to the TV, her lips quirking into a self-satisfied almost smile, "You're already winning out. You got me to come here day after day, hour after hour. What more do you want? The least you can do is let me have the damn TV and not bitch about it."

And put like that, crudely as it might be, Deanna had to admit to herself that Alicia had a point.


	10. Chapter 10: Hush

Hush

Throughout most of the day, Deanna was constantly being quietened by Alicia in some way. The older girl seemed to have little tolerance for small talk or making conversation, and in fact, she frequently demanded that Deanna simply stop talking at all and "let her hear her own damn thoughts, even if they do all suck, because they're still more interesting than anything you could say." She often rolled her eyes or sighed with utter exasperation or disbelief at the things Deanna said that she deemed to be naïve, stupid, geeky, or overly eager, and she often attempted to shock Deanna into silence with her own out-there behavior or statements. Deanna sometimes thought that if it were up to Alicia, she could comfortably exist in a bubble of total silence, walking around the world with no one and nothing, no touch, no sound, entering her personal space area. She never shared this with Alicia, because she had a feeling the girl would completely agree with her and might in fact seek to find a way to make this occur.

She couldn't go a day without hearing Alicia say that she wanted her to stop talking or modify what she was saying, to change her tone of voice or even her facial expression. Rarely an hour passed without Alicia scoffing at her words or in some way implying that they were stupid or unnecessary, wrong or lame. She was hushed by her so frequently that Deanna rarely even took the time to be offended or think it rude. It was simply how it was, to be with Alicia, and if she wanted to continue to have her company, it was something to become accustomed to without taking it too seriously.

But on the two occasions that Alicia stayed with her until she fell asleep, when the silence that Alicia claimed she craved was pierced by Deanna's screams when nightmares struck, the way that Alicia hushed her was entirely different than the times before. There was no impatience or irritation in Alicia's eyes as she bent over Deanna, her hands gingerly taking hold of her shoulders, only a concern that furrowed her brow and darkened her usually icy blue gaze. It was the only time that Alicia ever willingly touched her, and she was gentle, her hands barely ghosting Deanna's skin as she leaned close to her, her voice pitched soft.

"Hey. Hey, Deanna. Hey. It's all right. It's not real. It's not happening, you hear me, it's not real. You're here, you're safe. You're going to be okay. Do you hear me, Deanna? Hush…hush. You're going to be okay."

And gradually, her voice, gravelly and uncertain as it was, was what would soothe Deanna's panicked gasping, what would cause her to stop gulping for air as her breathing evened down to something approximating normal. It was her voice that would eventually calm her terror into a quieter fear, and when she closed her eyes, it would be to the sound of Alicia's much softer voice, still telling her to calm down, hushing her in an entirely new and preferable way to the way she had before.


End file.
